


Let’s Soak ‘em For Crutchie: The Successes and Shortcomings of Broadway’s Newsies in Accurate Representation of Disability

by letssoakemforcrutchy



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 23:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2751701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letssoakemforcrutchy/pseuds/letssoakemforcrutchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a research paper I wrote for one of my finals. It got full marks and I'm pretty proud of it, so I'm cross-posting it here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let’s Soak ‘em For Crutchie: The Successes and Shortcomings of Broadway’s Newsies in Accurate Representation of Disability

Spreading social awareness was a common aspiration among many popular films of the 1990s, and the 1992 cult classic Newsies was no exception. This box office flop told the story of the newboys’ strike of 1899, and how a group of kids led by the fictional strike organizers Jack Kelly and Davey Jacobs managed to shut down New York City to protest against child labor and unsafe working conditions. When the film was adapted into a stage musical in 2011, the plot was expanded to include additional storylines shedding light on other injustices of the era. Most notably, a minor character named Crutchy was redeveloped into a secondary protagonist, and the particular struggles he would have encountered on a day-to-day basis as a result of his disability became very important to the storyline. These changes not only served to demonstrate how challenging it was to live as a disabled laborer during the 19th century, but also to make it apparent how little has changed throughout the past century when it comes to the way society views people with disabilities.

Although working as a newsie does not entail any of the grueling manual labor of a dockyard job or factory work, it was still a rather physically demanding task for a young boy to spend the day walking throughout the city hawking newspapers. The boys have to work from sunrise to sundown, knowing full well that if they have not sold all their papers by the end of the day, they will not eat. In the essay “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence,” Robert McRuer defines able-bodiedness as “… being capable of the normal physical exertions required in a particular system of labor” (491), and this concept is illustrated by the contrast between the protagonists Jack and Crutchie. Jack, who is able-bodied and clearly in peak physical condition, always seems to be full of energy no matter how many hours he has worked. Crutchie, who lost the use of one of his legs to polio and walks with the aid of a crutch, has to work very hard to keep up with the rest of the boys, and there are moments when it takes a visible toll on him. Another newsie, Davey, mentions how his father was laid off after he was injured at work and could no longer be ‘useful’ to his employer, and Crutchie seems to be afraid that something similar could happen to him if he does not continually prove his worth.

However, Crutchie does find ways to capitalize upon his situation. In the essay “Fingered,” Lezlie Frye discusses how difficult it was for her to discover what she liked about her disability when people stared at her every time she went out (259), but this is the very thing Crutchie clings to. People stare and feel sorry for him when they see his limp, so he finds a way to manipulate that. He works with their sympathy in order to guilt them into buying his papers. But he refuses to be defined solely by his disability. When another newsie tells him “the limp sells fifty papes [sic] a week all by itself!” Crutchie argues “I don’t _need_ the limp to sell papes. I’ve got personality” ( _Newsies_ ). But it works well enough to make other newsies jealous; enough so that in an ironic subversion of compulsory able-bodiedness, there are some boys who attempt to fake a limp themselves to garner sympathy. After Joseph Pulitzer lowers the newsies’ wages and they go on strike, Crutchie hangs striker paraphernalia from his crutch and the boys express hope that it will make Mr. Pulitzer feel sorry for him and feel more sympathetic toward their cause. Frye speaks of an occasion where “Flanked by the confines of this repressive accusation that I am something less than whole or human, I begin to find a way in” (261), and this is how Crutchie seems to operate as well. He uses other people’s underestimations of him to find his way into their emotions and influence their thinking.

Despite Crutchie’s success at making the most out of the hand he’s been dealt, Jack seems to be under the impression that he would choose to be able-bodied if he could. Jack confides to him that he has always dreamed of running away to Santa Fe, and when Crutchie seems disinterested, he adds “No one worries about no gimp leg in Santa Fe … I bet a few months of clean air, you could toss that crutch for good!” Although he most likely means well, McRuer would point to his behavior as “A system of compulsory able-bodiedness [which] repeatedly demands that people with disabilities embody for others an affirmative answer to the unspoken question, ‘Yes, but in the end, wouldn’t you rather be more like me?’” (492). Although Jack makes it clear that he cares for Crutchie deeply, he does not seem able to accept his disability as a part of him. He sees it instead as something to fix. Lezlie Frye seems to view this type of mindset as denial, referring to “the first time I use the word disability, and my family tells me, “You’re not disabled. You’re perfectly capable.” “You’re normal, just like me,” my sister insists. That’s a bad word, see, and I’m not bad” (259). Jack acts in a similar manner, continually rejecting the fact that Crutchie is disabled, because to him, if he did that it would mean something was wrong with him. When another boy refers to Crutchie as a “lousy crip,” Jack gets very offended on Crutchie’s behalf before threatening “One unfortunate day, you might find you’ve got a bum gam of your own. How would you like us picking on you, huh?” He then announces “Hey, maybe we should find out!” ( _Newsies_ ) before taking Crutchie’s crutch and using it to hit the boy in the shins. The fact that Jack uses Crutchie’s disability as something with which to threaten someone he dislikes shows just how much he disassociates it from his friend. It seems rather telling that it is only after Crutchie’s disability gets him into trouble and Jack gets upset that he finally refers to him as a “crip.”

Despite the well-roundedness of Crutchie’s portrayal in this musical, there is still one area that leaves something to be desired. His characterization plays into what Tobin Siebers refers to in the essay “A Sexual Culture for Disabled People” as “one of the chief stereotypes oppressing disabled people,” which is “the myth that they do not experience sexual feelings or that they do not have or want to have sex – in short, that they do not have a sexual culture” (59). With Jack, it is made very clear that he is sexually active. He makes reference to the girls he’d previously been involved with, cracks innuendos, and has a female love interest introduced early on in the show. The other boys also talk about girls and flirt with women on the street, but Crutchie is never involved in these encounters. In an interview with the musical’s songwriters Jack Feldman and Alan Menken on The American Theatre Wing’s “Working in the Theatre” series, they describe creating Crutchie’s relationship with Jack as “We’d want to avoid, certainly, anything that’s going to be like as if it were a romantic connection. There’s a connection that’s more childlike than that” (Feldman and Menken). They frequently describe Jack and Crutchie’s relationship as that of a parent and child, despite the fact that Crutchie and Jack are around the same age. It is made clear in this interview that the writers view disability as something that stunts maturity, making those who have them ‘dependent.’ Reviewers picked up on this and frequently referred to Crutchie as childlike, one even going so far as to comment on his “youthful innocence” (Conrad). These reviewers completely gloss over the fact that he is the same age as Jack and that he curses and yells just as much as the rest of the boys do. Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who originated the role of Crutchie on Broadway, explained “I think a lot of people are probably expecting the handicapped newsie to be really waif-like and just innocent and angelic, but Crutchie’s really, he’s tough-as-nails and a real wise-guy.” But despite the efforts of Keenan-Bolger and the other actors who succeeded him to make Crutchie seem just as street-hardened as the other newsies, the way the show’s writers denied him of any form of sexuality seems to reinforce the preconceived notions of these reviewers that a disabled character must be naïve.

Perhaps because of Crutchie’s lack of interest in any other relationships in the script, the actors who play Crutchie tend to pour a lot of emotion into his relationship with Jack. Of the three main relationships that develop over the course of the show – Jack’s relationship with Crutchie, Jack’s relationship with his fellow strike leader Davey, and Jack’s relationship with his love interest Katherine – Jack and Crutchie’s relationship seems to take precedence. As a result, it is very easy to undertake a queer reading of their relationship, despite the efforts of the creative team to prevent such an interpretation. The musical opens with a tender duet between the two of them, where Jack reveals secrets from his past and opens up about his dreams for the future. In ensemble numbers, the two are almost always together, and when Crutchie is arrested at a protest because his limp made it difficult to run away, Jack brings down the curtain of Act I with a tearful, solo version of their original duet. Both Davey and Mr. Pulitzer try to talk him into continuing or ending the strike by bringing up Crutchie; Davey by demanding “Tell me how quitting does Crutchie any good!” ( _Newsies_ ), and Pulitzer by offering to release him from prison if Jack will cooperate with him. The most character development Jack undergoes is when he has to come to really understand Crutchie, disability and all, to make a final decision.

For Crutchie, much of his character development involves coming to terms with himself and seeing that Jack does as well. When he has moments of low self-confidence, he tends to agree with Jack’s idea of taking him to Santa Fe, where the fresh air will “fix” him. There’s a moment when he admits to Jack that his limp has gotten worse and he is worried he’ll be taken away, and when Jack brings up Santa Fe, Crutchie humors him and the two make conversation about all the physical labor they would be able to accomplish together there, things like planting crops, chopping wood, and working the land. After his arrest, his self-confidence seems to reach an all-time low. In a new song added to the First National Tour, Crutchie writes to Jack from prison and apologizes for not being able to get away fast enough. He hints about other instances where his disability has caused inconvenience, things like “these here guards / they is rude / they say jump and you jump or you’re screwed” ( _Newsies_ ) and “there’s this secret escape plan I got / … maybe not / not tonight / I ain’t slept and my leg still ain’t right” ( _Newsies_ ). He ends the letter by asking Jack to come get him and take him to Santa Fe. But at the end of the show, when he is released from prison and reunited with Jack, he is fully confident again. When the warden of the prison ends up getting arrested for keeping prisoners in barely-livable conditions, Crutchie makes fun of him and calls him the names he had called Crutchie when he arrested him earlier. When Jack announces that he will be leaving for Santa Fe, Crutchie makes it clear that he wants to stay in New York. After accepting his disability as a part of himself that will never change no matter where he goes, he forces Jack to do the same by refusing to indulge in his fantasy any longer. And when Jack chooses to stay in New York as well, it shows that he has finally matured.

Although Crutchie may not be a perfect example when it comes to representation of the disabled community, he is by far one of the best in theatre, where the “Tiny Tim archetype” (Keenan-Bolger) is still very prevalent today. Crutchie is a well-rounded character who experiences both good and bad things as a result of his disability. He faces a variety of obstacles over the course of the musical, but none of them end with a magic solution where he is suddenly “fixed.” It is important for people, particularly the younger audiences that this show attracts, to witness the amount of unabashed self-love he manages to develop, particularly in a culture where disability is seen as something that robs an individual of worth.

Works Cited

“Alan Menken and Jack Feldman Write “Letter from the Refuge” - Newsies - ATW: Working in the Theatre.” _Youtube_. The American Theatre Wing, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

Conrad, Josh. “Passing the Crutch: Andy Richardson Takes over as Crutchie in ‘Newsies’.” _Stage Door Dish_. N.p., 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

Frye, Lezlie. “Fingered.” _Sex and Disability_. Ed. Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012. 256-62. Print.

McRuer, Robert. “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” _The Routledge Queer Studies Reader_. Ed. Donald E. Hall, Annamarie Jagose, Andrea Bebell, and Susan Potter. New York: Routledge, 2013. 488-97. Print.

"Meet the Newsies: Crutchie (Andrew Keenan-Bolger)." _YouTube_. Disney on Broadway, 2 Feb. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

Menken, Alan, and Jack Feldman. _Newsies the Musical: Original Broadway Cast Recording_. Ghostlight Records, 2012. CD.

_Newsies_. By Harvey Fierstein. Nederlander Theatre, New York. 13 June 2012. Performance.

_Newsies_. By Harvey Fierstein. The Mainstage at Proctors, Schenectady. 17 Oct. 2014. Performance.

Siebers, Tobin. “A Sexual Culture for Disabled People.” _Sex and Disability_. Ed. Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012. 37-53. Print.


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